SOME ENGLISH AND SCOTCH PREACHERS.
EDINBURGH, _August 25, 1902_.
[Sidenote: London Preachers.]
I once received a letter from the late Rev. Dr. William S. Lacy,
saying that he had been trying to make use of a certain work in one of
the departments of theological study, and asking if I could suggest
something "less fearfully jejune," an expression which I have ever
since regarded as a masterpiece of characterization. The first sermon
I heard in Europe, preached in a cathedral, in 1896, by a clergyman
of the English Church, reminded me of it, for it gave me an intense
craving for something "less fearfully jejune." One of my ministerial
companions remarked that it was about such a discourse as one would
expect from a member of the junior class in Union Seminary, which I
thought was rather hard on the juniors. The other five sermons that
I heard from ministers of the Church of England that year, preached
respectively by Canon Holland, Dean Farrar, Dr. Wace, Rev. H. R.
Haweis, and Mr. Gray, of Heidelberg, were certainly not jejune,
whatever else may be said of them. At Heidelberg we had the good
fortune to meet Prof. Gildersleeve, of Baltimore, who is quite at home
in the German university towns, and who was very kind to us in every
way. He took us to the English Church there. Mr. Gray is a quiet,
thoughtful, and edifying preacher--the right kind of man, I should
say, for a community of that sort. Canon Holland--a man of far more
freshness and vigor--preached in St. Paul's, and, though powerfully
built, and with a resonant and well-managed voice, could be heard by
only a small portion of the large congregation. It is said that the
late Canon Liddon, the foremost preacher of the English Church in his
time, broke himself down prematurely by the extraordinary exertions
he made to project his voice to the limits of the great crowds which
gathered in that vast building to hear him. I have an eccentric friend
in New England who calls the cathedrals "Gothic devils," because they
hinder the preaching of the gospel. St. Paul's is not Gothic, of
course, but it is worse, perhaps, in point of acoustics than any Gothic
church whatsoever.
[Sidenote: Dean Farrar.]
We had the singular good fortune, in 1896, to hear Dean Farrar one
evening in Westminster Abbey in a discourse which displayed, to the
best possible advantage, the exceeding opulence of his rhetoric. He
was trying to raise money for the restoration of Canterbury Cathedral
in a manner worthy of its approaching thirteen hundredth anniversary,
and his discourse was a review of the work of the English Church and
the English nation during these thirteen centuries. What a combination
of man and subject and place that was! The most rhetorical eminent
preacher of the day, discussing with all the exuberance of his splendid
diction such a subject as "England," ecclesiastical and civil, for the
last thirteen hundred years, in such a place as Westminster Abbey,
surrounded by the tombs and statues of England's mighty dead, the
wearers of her crown, and the possessors of her genius, her soldiers,
and sailors, and statesmen, her painters, and poets, and philosophers,
and preachers--
"Those dead but sceptered sovereigns
Whose spirits still rule us from their urns."
The rich music, the soft light, the dim arches, the white statues, the
stirring theme, the sympathetic voice, the luxuriant rhetoric--as the
preacher referred, for instance, to "the sea which England has turned
from an estranging barrier into an azure marriage ring for the union of
the nations"--all conspired to make a unique impression. Dean Farrar's
ornate style cloys on the taste sometimes when one reads his books, but
when listening to his sermons it was not so. He was a very effective
preacher, and, in the notable discourse to which I have just referred,
he did not once overlay his thought too thickly with glittering
verbiage. As for the other parts of the service I have only to say
again that it is an unspeakable pity that a noble service like that of
the Church of England (in which, as to its essence, all evangelical
people can heartily unite) should be so commonly made a mere matter of
mechanical routine, and artificial and absurd recitation.
[Sidenote: Mr. Haweis and Dr. Wace.]
Mr. Haweis looked like a small edition of the late Henry Ward
Beecher--long hair, smooth face, large mouth, but with a peculiar,
penetrating voice, and an abrupt, jerky manner. He was unconventional
and racy to the last degree, and cut a good many "monkey shines" in
the pulpit, which were all the more startling because of his elaborate
white clerical vestments--such as resting his elbow on the desk, with
his chin in his hand, for the space of five minutes, talking all the
time as fast as Phillips Brooks, except for the peculiar "ah! ah!"
which he interjected between sentences from time to time, as if unable
to find the word he wanted--then letting himself down, and hanging over
the pulpit on his armpits, with his arms in front and his body behind.
His sermon didn't have anything to do with his text, so far as I could
see. He was a Broad Churchman, as broad as Dean Stanley. In fact, he
was like the dog of which the train man said, in answer to an inquiry
as to the dog's destination, "I don't know, an' 'ee don't know, an'
nobody don't know. 'Ee's et his tag."
Dr. Wace, in whom I was interested as one of the stoutest knights who
have recently measured lances with the agnostics, preached a well
written sermon, in a dull and lifeless way, to a handful of people at
Lincoln's Inn Chapel. But we should not forget that there are many
Presbyterian ministers who, as one of our secretaries of foreign
missions once said, "carry a load of dogmatic theology into the pulpit,
and dump it on the people, laboring all the time under the delusion
that in so doing they are preaching the gospel."
[Sidenote: Spurgeon, Parker and Hughes.]
Some years ago a child was asked, "Who is the Prime Minister of
England?" and replied, not unnaturally, "Mr. Spurgeon." That Spurgeon
has been called up still higher, but in the great Metropolitan
Tabernacle, which he built in London, thousands of people still
gather Sunday after Sunday to hear the gospel preached by his son and
successor, the Rev. Thomas Spurgeon. Of course, he cannot bend the
bow of Ulysses. But, for that matter, there is no preacher living who
can. Still he is a clear, earnest, effective preacher. We were at the
opposite end of the church from him, but heard every word distinctly.
Another dissenting minister, who continues to draw great crowds in
London, is Dr. Joseph Parker, and he is probably the ablest preacher
in the city, though on the day I first heard him, in 1896, he was so
indistinct in his utterances at times that I found it almost impossible
to follow him. There was an air of self-importance about him which I
trust was only apparent. We heard him again the other day, when he
occupied his pulpit for the first time after a long illness. He was
quite feeble, and there were only occasional brief flashes of the
volcanic fires which used to flame and thunder through his preaching.
I heard the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes also, the leading Methodist preacher
of London, in a faithful and striking exposition of Haggai, an
excellent expository sermon, just what I did not expect from him, as he
has at times been charged with sensationalism.
The Moravians, as is well known, lead the whole Christian world in
zeal and liberality in the cause of Foreign Missions. At the Moravian
chapel in Fetter Lane we heard a clear and helpful sermon from Mr.
Waugh, the minister in charge. After the service he kindly showed us
all through the Mission House, the centre of that unique propaganda
which, with comparatively small resources, has given the pure gospel to
so many remote and needy portions of the globe, and set the pace for
all the churches in the work of carrying out the Great Commission. This
chapel has some associations with John Wesley; and, remembering the
obligations under which he lay to these earnest, evangelical Christians
of the Unitas Fratrum, and the part since played by the great Methodist
Church in the evangelization of the world, we felt that the Moravian
Mission House was an appropriate place in which to recall the character
and services of that rightly venerated epoch-maker and man of God who
said, "My parish is the world."
I heard a number of rich sermons from Dr. John Hunter, Gipsy Smith, Dr.
Thornton, Rev. R. J. Campbell, and Mr. Connell. But the strongest, most
spiritual and most comforting sermon I heard in London was preached by
the Rev. J. Monro Gibson, D. D., pastor of St. John's Wood Presbyterian
Church. That also was an expository sermon, as the best preaching so
often is.
[Sidenote: General Booth.]
The only other man of mark whom I heard in the metropolis was General
Booth, organizer, leader, and absolute monarch of the Salvation Army,
an old man of spare frame, with shaggy, grisled hair and beard. His
voice is not a good one, but he commands perfect attention, and his
sermon, which was evidently well thought out, and which, if I remember
aright, had but one undignified remark in it, showed the true nature
of sin, and laid hold of the conscience with power. When we entered
Exeter Hall, which was already nearly full of people, we saw on the
platform a band of sixty musicians, in scarlet uniforms, leading the
multitude with violins, cornets and drums, in a hymn sung lustily to
the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." When the General came on the platform
a few minutes later, they received him with a cheer. His sermon was
followed by the usual uproarious proceedings. With these, of course, I
have no sympathy, nor with the absolute despotism of General Booth, but
the Salvation Army has done a vast deal of good among "the submerged
tenth." The census taken this year by the _London News_ shows, however,
that the Salvation Army is on the decline in that city, and the reason
assigned for it is the lack of a body of trained preachers.
But Scotland is the land of preachers. The greatest Scotchman that ever
lived was a preacher, and to him, John Knox, Scotland is more indebted
for what she is to-day than to any other man.
[Sidenote: What Sir Walter Said.]
"The Scotch, it is well known, are more remarkable for the exercise
of their intellectual powers than for the keenness of their feelings;
they are, therefore, more moved by logic than by rhetoric, and more
attracted by acute and argumentative reasoning on doctrinal points
than influenced by the enthusiastic appeals to the heart and to the
passions, by which the popular preachers in other countries win the
favor of their hearers." So wrote Sir Walter Scott, and no doubt there
is truth in it; but we must not underestimate the quickness and depth
of their feelings. It was an apparently hard-natured Scotchman of our
own day who wrote the following more balanced estimate, "It's a God's
mercy I was born a Scotchman, for I do not see how I could ever have
been contented to be anything else. The little, plucky, dour nation,
set in her own ways, and getting them, too, level-headed and shrewd,
and yet so lovingly weak, so fond, so led away by song or story, so
easily touched to fine issues, so real, so true." Carlyle said Burns
was the æolian harp of nature against which the rude winds of adversity
blew, only to be transmuted in their passage into heavenly music. But
no people without tender and strong feelings could have produced or
appreciated such a poet as Burns. (By the way, I was astonished to
discover, in 1896, that there were more than thirty thousand visitors
annually to the birthplace of Burns, as against only twenty thousand to
the birthplace of Shakespeare.) Moreover, no people without the right
kind of feeling, and plenty of it--aye, and of enthusiasm, too--could
have accomplished what Scotland has done. With a rigorous climate and
a small country, much of it wild and untillable mountain and moor, and
with fewer people in the whole country than in the city of London,
Scotland--
"On with toil of heart and knees and hand,
Through the long gorge to the far light hath won
Her path upward and prevailed,"
and to-day she wields an influence in the world out of all proportion
to her population and resources. In fact, the Scotch are in many
respects the greatest people of modern times.
[Sidenote: Dr. Marcus Dods.]
But I have wandered from my subject, which was Scotch preaching and
preachers. I heard four eminent men in Edinburgh, on my first visit
there six years ago--Prof. A. B. Davidson, Prof. Marcus Dods, Dr.
Alexander Whyte, and Dr. George Matheson. Prof. Davidson's voice,
manner and style were much better adapted to a small class-room,
with its detailed linguistic and exegetical methods, than to popular
preaching in a large church. But if there was some disappointment
in regard to the preaching of the learned and famous author of the
Hebrew grammars, and the father of the whole liberal, not to say
radical, movement in Biblical Criticism, which has swept all Scotland
into its vortex, there was none in regard to that of his brilliant
colleague, Dr. Dods. Many of my readers are familiar with the late Dr.
Henry C. Alexander's high estimate of Dr. Dods' work on New Testament
Introduction, which he used as a textbook in Union Seminary, and with
the general excellence of his luminous and suggestive commentaries,
though some of them are unfortunately marred by the obtrusion of views
which are not altogether satisfactory. But probably few readers, even
of his best books, would have expected from him a sermon so sane, and
sound, and spiritual as that which I heard from him. It was fully
written, and very quietly read, with absolutely no action, and with
a modest and even diffident manner, but before he had uttered half
a dozen sentences, the originality and power of the thought, and
the freshness and vigor of the language, laid the hearer under the
spell of a master, and, as he proceeded, first with keen analysis and
irrefutable argument, and then with those considerations which can
never be adduced save by a man who has had _experience_, who knows sin,
and struggle, and salvation, your sense of the preacher's power was
succeeded, or rather accompanied, by a sense of his sympathy, and you
were ready to accompany him to his high practical conclusion, and left
the church assured that he had, under God, given you a real and abiding
spiritual uplift.
[Sidenote: Dr. George Matheson.]
The only other man who impressed me deeply, on my former visit to
Edinburgh, was Dr. Matheson. He is antipodal to Prof. Dods in his
style of preaching. He is blind, as you know, and was led in from
the vestry to the pulpit, a large man, with gray hair and beard, and
a ruddy and radiant face, despite his sightless eyes, as though he
walked continually in the white vision of the Invisible. His short,
fervent, pointed prayers seemed to put every earnest hearer into
sensible communion with the Father of our spirits, and his sermon on
the great disappointments and mysteries of life was most satisfying
and comforting, and was delivered with rare animation and unction,
the rich fancy and glowing language justifying the remark made to me
afterwards by an eminent Scotchman, that Matheson was a poet as well
as a preacher. I must add that some of my friends who went to hear
him afterwards, on the ground of my enthusiastic recommendation, were
disappointed, saying that his exegesis was illegitimate, and that he
treated his text after the manner of Origen and the Allegorizers. But
we must remember that even Spurgeon was often guilty of that. This does
not excuse it, of course. It only shows that a man may sometimes do it,
and yet be a great preacher.
[Sidenote: Dr. Whyte and Mr. Black.]
Dr. Whyte, of Free St. George's, is reckoned by many the ablest
preacher in Edinburgh. I was in his church on my former visit to
Scotland, when he preached a deeply moving sermon in connection with
a communion service. Unfortunately for us, he was absent from the
city during the whole of our stay this time. But his brilliant young
associate, the Rev. Hugh Black, leaves one no ground for complaint as
to the quality of the preaching in Edinburgh in the summer. He is a
very highly cultivated man, and an original and suggestive preacher,
but with no special advantages of manner. He is slender, pallid,
nervous, with a rather pleasing voice in its lower tones, but of
limited range, breaking if he attempts to raise it. This shuts him
out from some of the best oratorical effects. But what he lacks in
voice and manner he makes up in richness of matter, and finish of
style. He is well known as the author of _Friendship_ and _Culture and
Restraint_, two books which have had a wide circulation in America. We
have made his church our regular place of worship, and have been drawn
away from it only occasionally by the desire to hear such well-known
veterans as Dr. McGregor, of St. Cuthbert's Established Church, and Dr.
Hood Wilson, the retiring pastor of Barclay Free Church. This last, by
the way, is a curious, but rather striking stone building, with the
most hideous interior I have ever seen. It is a night-mare of bad taste.
We have heard at other times Prof. Orr, author of various works of
value in the department of Dogmatic Theology, the Rev. P. Carnegie
Simpson, of Glasgow, author of _The Fact of Christ_, and the Rev.
Thomas Burns, F. R. S. E., author of a unique and sumptuous work on
_Old Scottish Communion Plate_.
[Sidenote: The Inevitable Subject.]
To Mr. Burns I am indebted for an introduction to Prof. Sayce, of
Oxford, and for a delightful hour at tea with the famous archæologist
and author in his house at Edinburgh, where he spends most of the
summer. He generally lives on a houseboat on the Nile in winter, and
the weather in Edinburgh this summer has been such as to make him long
for that houseboat, and that soft Egyptian climate more than ever.
When we reached the city a month ago, we found much the same kind of
weather that greeted Mary Queen of Scots on her return from France,
and of which John Knox wrote as follows, "The very face of heaven did
manifestlie speak what comfort was brought to this country with hir--to
wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impiety--for in the memorie of
man never was seen more dolorous face of the heavens than was at her
arryvall ... the myst was so thick that skairse micht onie man espy
another; and the sun was not seyn to shyne two days befoir nor two days
after." We had mists a plenty, but it was the cold weather and the
rain that interfered most with our plans. It actually did rain nearly
every day, and often four or five times a day, not mere showers, but
drenching rains. In fact, the kind of weather we had nearly all the
time, not only in Edinburgh, but throughout Scotland and England, gave
us a keen appreciation of the following story of the London weather
which we find in the Manchester _Guardian_:
"The scene was a Strand omnibus. A leaden sky was overhead, the
rain poured down uncompromisingly, mud was underfoot. A red-capped
Parsee, who had been sitting near the dripping driver, got down as
the conductor came up. 'What sort o' chap is that,' asked the driver.
'Don't yer know that,' answered the conductor. 'Why, that's one o' them
Indians that worship the sun!' 'Worships the sun?' said the shivering
driver. 'I suppose 'e's come over 'ere to 'ave a rest!'
"This recalls the reply given on one occasion by an Eastern potentate
to Queen Victoria, who asked him whether his people did not worship
the sun. 'Yes, your Majesty,' said the Oriental, 'and if you saw him
you would worship him also.'"
However, if I begin to write about Scotch weather, I shall never get
back to my proper subject, which is Scotch preaching.